"Throwing growth into reverse
There's no doubt Splunk's business is growing. Even in the second quarter, when it caused Wall Street bulls to get wobbly, revenue grew 33% to $517 million, well ahead of analyst forecasts of $488 million. It followed that up in the third quarter as revenue rose another 30% year over year to $626 million, and again ahead of projections of a $600 million gain.
Splunk is forecast to grow 26% in the fourth quarter to a consensus $783 million, while management has offered conservative guidance of $780 million. It's worth noting that the data analytics specialist handily surpasses its own guidance on a routine basis.
But it was Splunk's sudden reversal on OCF for fiscal 2020, which ends at the end of this month, that originally caused consternation. It had reported $296 million in OCF at the end of fiscal 2019 and had forecast $350 million this year. yBut in the second quarter, it surprised everyone by saying it now expected the year to end with OCF of negative $300 million, a $650 million reversal from just six months prior.
Even from the first quarter's outlook, where Splunk had eased back guidance to positive OCF of $250 million, it still caught everyone by surprise that things looked bad all of a sudden. But management did have a seemingly valid explanation for the change, though it took the company three more months to reassure everyone that $1 billion in operating cash flow was still an attainable goal.
As mentioned earlier, Splunk is changing its business model, or rather how it bills customers for its business. Beforehand, it offered perpetual licenses for its software-as-a-service technology, having customers pay up front for the software license with the right to use it indefinitely. But now it's changing to a subscription-based model, billing customers for the license that allows the software to be used for a specific length of time....."
www.fool.com/investing/2020/01/06/...illion-in-cash-flow.aspx